Irony and The Ghost Map

Lovely review of The Ghost Map by David Quammen in the Times Book Review this morning. It's interesting to see the many ways that reviewers have tried to connect the book to Everything Bad: some arguing for a connection between John Snow's battle against the orthodoxy of the day to my battle against the anti-pop culture biases of our own time; others playing on the idea that I'm finally admitting that some bad things are truly bad for you. Quammen has a clever connection, drawing upon the Harper's games forum I recently participated in:

Johnson himself, having spent much of his childhood playing baseball-simulation games rich with complexity and data, has now applied his own nimble cognitive skills to a real-world ecosystem much messier than any imaginary ball diamond or video-game universe: the city of London in the mid-19th century, with its 2.4 million humans, nightmarish plumbing and burden of dangerous microbes.

The truth is, I think the books really aren't that related at all. As I've said here before, Emergence is really the prequel to this new one.

He also has an interesting critique at the end:

One tic, which seems to me not just a matter of careless wording, is his overly frequent use of the word “ironically” and its variants: “The tragic irony of cholera” was one thing, “the dominant irony of the state of British public health” was something else, the “dark irony” of the miasma theory was this, the “sad irony” of Snow’s argument was that — and I could cite many other instances. That’s a little too much irony for one short book, and it seems to reflect Johnson’s insistence that his insights, beyond being interesting and significant, are ingenious reversals of expectation.

I think I half agree with this critique. As a matter of style, he's got a point. I probably could have come up with more original phrasing. But I genuinely don't see The Ghost Map as a contrarian book, reversing conventional wisdom the way Everything Bad clearly was designed to do. In most of the instances that Quammen refers to, I'm not saying that my interpretation is particularly clever. I'm saying that the historical actors were trying to do something, and ironically managed to do the exact opposite, as in Chadwick poisoning the water supply in his battle against cholera. But perhaps that's a sloppy use of "irony" itself.

Comments

I guess most reviewers are used to having neat categories to put their authors in (everyone is a "brand"), and you've thrown them a curve. So maybe you're "contrarian" in that respect -- not sticking to one genre like they expected.

I just heard your interview on NPR and found it very evocative/compelling. Just thought I'd drop a note and say thanks. I wasn't sure where to put my comment as the comment box that looked more appropriate than this one seems to have been spammed. I hope it's okay to put a link to your site on my blog. I'm pretty sure that some of the folks that read me would be interested in following your latest efforts.

I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of nine books, host of one television series, and co-founder of three web sites. We split our time between Brooklyn, NY and Marin County, CA. Personal correspondence should go to sbeej68 at gmail dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of InnovationAn exploration of environments that lead to breakthrough innovation, in science, technology, business, and the arts. I conceived it as the closing book in a trilogy on innovative thinking, after Ghost Map and Invention. But in a way, it completes an investigation that runs through all the books, and laid the groundwork for How We Got To Now. (Available from IndieBound here.)

The Invention of AirThe story of the British radical chemist Joseph Priestley, who ended up having a Zelig-like role in the American Revolution. My version of a founding fathers book, and a reminder that most of the Enlightenment was driven by open source ideals. (Available from IndieBound here.)

The Ghost MapThe story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here. (Available from IndieBound here.)

Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday LifeMy first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites. (Available from IndieBound here.)